Here on the Mindbla blog we’ve discussed Twitter and assorted Tweet-related sites, what Tumblr is all about (hint – think Facebook for the Younger Generation) and all of its glorious insanity and peculiarity, then there are the giants like Facebook and Google Plus that occupy so many peoples time and attention including ours, along with all kinds of other new and interesting (and confusing!) social media websites available for our enjoyment these days. Today I’d like to talk about another interesting, though quite puzzling, social media site out there which is another quasi-blogging platform with some mildly interesting twists. It is known, strangely, as Squidoo.

On Squidoo you create mini-blogs, known as lenses, where you write posts, add links, upload pictures, and do all kinds of other stuff that you might do on a regular blog like Mindbla here, but the twist is you publish this lens as a sort of stand-alone site (although you can link them up as well), and it gets ranked and people can search for it and you can actually make money from the ads there. A very nice feature is you can opt in for donating your money to charity rather than simply collect it yourself, which can be nice if you’re not making much and would rather simply donate it to various charities. In fact, that seem to encourage that, since it’s the first option in the setup, and actually getting the money is further down on the list.

There are some other fairly amusing twists, such as receiving points for your various activities such as creating lenses and liking and commenting on other people’s lenses and a bunch of other stuff. It seems as though you are able to get points for pretty much anything you do, so it can be rather addicting and fun to see what earns you points next. On the other hand, it’s really tough to see the relative value in gaining all these points, you unlock some mildly interesting new features that don’t seem particularly special and aren’t anything to write home about, but I suppose that’s all part of the game to keep the people all engaged-like and happy. Welcome to Web 2.0 style, right? There are also some feature known as a ‘quest’ which I gather is just a way to encourage people to create lenses of one particular type or another, or read other people’s lenses, and other money-see monkey-do type stuff like that. Seems more trouble than it’s worth but then again I haven’t really been using Squidoo for all that long yet, maybe it’ll grow on me over time.

Thanks for reading!